More than one hundred years after it first appeared in the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and thirty years after it was reportedly put to rest, the so-called White Australia policy continues to haunt the Australian political landscape. In the new millennium the Tampa incident and controversy surrounding asylum seekers have fuelled renewed speculation about the enduring legacies of White Australia. In this volume, leading Australian scholars critically re-examine a hundred years of White Australia to provide a foundational contribution to an informed debate on the essential issues of race, identity and nation that will determine attitudes to immigration, multiculturalism and Australian-Asian engagement in the twenty-first century.

The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australia's racial past. Creating White Australia takes a fresh approach to the question of 'race' in Australian history. It demonstrates that Australia's racial foundations can only be understood by recognising whiteness too as 'race'. Including contributions from some of the leading as well as emerging scholars in Australian history, it breaks new ground by arguing that 'whiteness' was central to the racial ideologies that created the Australian nation. This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.

Mass immigration post World War II has transformed Australian society and politics. This is indeed a far cry from the vision of the architects of the 'White Australia' policy over a hundred years ago. This volume explores this dramatic change by examining the politics of the peopling of Australia dating from the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, the so-called 'White Australia' policy which sought to forge the Australian nation as a 'citadel of the British speaking race' (Prime Minister Curtin). The book examines how critical issues of race and immigration still haunt the political landscape even as we find an increasingly cosmopolitan Australia becoming more Asian oriented. As a study of this unique and successful experiment in creating a diverse and multicultural society, this book will be useful to anyone interested in what drives and sustains a diverse and pluralistic society.

The "White Australia Policy" - the country's historical policy that favored immigration to Australia from various European countries, especially Britain - has largely been discussed with regard only to its political-ideological perspective. No account was taken of the central problem of racist societalization, i.e. the everyday production and reproduction of race as a social relation (doing race) supported by broad sections of the population. This comprehensive study of Australian racism and the historical "white sugar" campaign shows that the latter was only able to achieve success because it was embedded in a widespread white Australia culture that found expression in all spheres of life. (Series: Racism Analysis - Series A: Studies - Vol. 4) [Subject: Social History, Australian Studies]

At last a history of Australia in its dynamic global context. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in response to the mobilisation and mobility of colonial and coloured peoples around the world, self-styled 'white men's countries' in South Africa, North America and Australasia worked in solidarity to exclude those peoples they defined as not-white--including Africans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese and Pacific Islanders. Their policies provoked in turn a long international struggle for racial equality. Through a rich cast of characters that includes Alfred Deakin, WEB Du Bois, Mahatma Gandhi, Lowe Kong Meng, Tokutomi Soho, Jan Smuts and Theodore Roosevelt, leading Australian historians Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds tell a gripping story about the circulation of emotions and ideas, books and people in which Australia emerged as a pace-setter in the modern global politics of whiteness. The legacy of the White Australia policy still cases a shadow over relations with the peoples of Africa and Asia, but campaigns for racial equality have created new possibilities for a more just future. Remarkable for the breadth of its research and its engaging narrative, Drawing the Global Colour Line offers a new perspective on the history of human rights and provides compelling and original insight into the international political movements that shaped the twentieth century.

Is Australia a 'racist' country? Why do issues of race and culture seem to ignite public debate so readily? Tim Soutphommasane, Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, reflects on the national experience of racism and the progress that has been made since the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975. As the first federal human rights and discrimination legislation, the Act was a landmark demonstration of Australia's commitment to eliminating racism. Published to coincide with the Act's fortieth anniversary, this book gives a timely and incisive account of the history of racism, the limits of free speech, the dimensions of bigotry and the role of legislation in our society's response to discrimination. With contributions by Maxine Beneba Clarke, Bindi Cole Chocka, Benjamin Law, Alice Pung and Christos Tsiolkas.

The East and Southeast Asian region is of immense economic, strategic and cultural significance to Australia. It has also been important in defining Australia's national identity, and is the origin of many of Australia's immigrants. Australians therefore need to have some understanding of their northern neighbours, and to be able to think about them in an informed way. They need to do so not only to be able to understand the region in which they live, but also to better understand themselves. This book facilitates this process by providing comparisons between Asian and Australian societies. The reader is encouraged to think about Australia's neighbours across a wide range of social, economic and historical contexts. Written in an accessible and informative way, this is a book for all Australians who seek a better understanding of Australia's neighbours in East and Southeast Asia.